Good Reads on Writing and Blogging

8 Rhetorical Strategies that Can Strengthen Your Writing(Poynter) – Speaking of revisions, Poynter’s resident writing coach Roy Peter Clark shares advice from Quintilian, a famous Roman rhetorician, that can help make your writing better. That advice includes studying writers of all kinds, letting a story “cool off” before revising it, and connecting reading, writing and speaking. Nice to know some things never change, even after 2,000 years.

On writing in the morning(The New Yorker) – Most writers I know have rituals or routines to help get them in the zone and ready to put words on the page (or computer screen). Roxana Robinson’s is almost zen-like, a quick bowl of granola, instant coffee, sitting with her laptop so she can’t log onto Facebook. Nice as it sounds, it’d never work for me. I still have a kid to get off to school. And I hate instant coffee.

‘Be Wrong as Fast as You Can’ (New York Times Magazine) – While you’re busy trying to come up with the next big idea that’s going to make you famous, you might already be doing what you were meant to do. And that’s OK, says NYTM editor Hugo Lindgren in this essay on the career ambitions and struggles that writers – and editors – live with. The best line: “Ideas, in a sense, are overrated,” he writes. “Of course, you need good ones, but at this point in our supersaturated culture, precious few are so novel that nobody else has ever thought of them before. It’s really about where you take the idea, and how committed you are to solving the endless problems that come up in the execution.”

Media Industry News

CBS takes aim at a rival, shoots CNET in the foot (paidContent) – CNET was set to include a small tech company in its list of best technology showings at this week’s CES consumer electronics expo in Las Vegas, until its parent company intervened. Seems CBS is suing Hopper and told CNET to pull the company from the list.

WSJ doubles down on scoops(Columbia Journalism Review) – CJR’s Dean Starkman discusses the merits of a new directive at the business paper exhorting writers to break more news stories. But focusing exclusively on scoops doesn’t a good news organization make, Starkman argues. “News, especially business news….is a balancing act between access and accountability,” he writes, “between investor interests and the public interest. As we learned during the financial crisis, they’re not the same thing.”

One of many examples of content as a business model(LinkedIn) – Venture capitalist and former business journalist Esther Dyson is the latest to weigh in on Andrew Sullivan’s plan to launch a subscription-based blog. Her assessment of whether Sullivan’s venture, or any other, will make it is also as good an explanation as I’ve ever read about why some people — including writers — do well on their own, and some don’t. She writes:

Individuals may join institutions, using their resources to get visibility, and then leave them to capitalize on their own capabilities. Institutions will need to cater more to their stars, who might leave if they believe they can do better on the outside. And those who find it tough on the outside will come back to the institutions, looking for an easier life and the leverage institutions can share.

2 responses to “Good reads for Jan. 11: Forgiveness, rewrites, top colors for 2013, and more”

That really is true about good writing being good rewriting (20 Great Writers on the Art of Revision). The only problem is, the rewriting never really stops. I mean, sooner or later you have to finish. But if you’re honest with yourself (as a writer), you could always make it just that much better.